Agatha, clinging to her new friend, laid her head on Melissa’s shoulder; and as Melissa looked on the beautiful face, and remembered the fond passion which her heedless brother had conceived for its twin image, or as now and again the Christian girl’s loving words appealed to her more especially, she stroked the long, flowing tresses of her brown hair.

It needed, indeed, no more than a common feeling, an experience gone through together, an hour of confidential solitude, to join the hearts of the two maidens; and as they awaited the day, shoulder to shoulder in uninterrupted chat, they felt as though they had shared every joy and sorrow from the cradle.  Agatha’s weaker nature found a support in the calm strength of will which was evident in many things Melissa said; and when the Christian opened her tender and pitying heart to Melissa with touching candor, it was like a view into a new but most inviting world.

Agatha’s extreme beauty, too, struck the artist’s daughter as something divine, and her eye often rested admiringly on her new friend’s pure and regular features.

When Agatha inquired of her about her father, Melissa briefly replied, that since her mother’s death he was often moody and rough, but that he had a good, kind heart.  The Christian girl, on the contrary, spoke with enthusiasm of the warm, human loving-kindness of the man to whom she owed her being; and the picture she drew of her home life was so fair, that the little heathen could hardly believe in its truth.  Her father, Agatha said, lived in constant warfare with the misery and suffering of his fellow-creatures, and he was, in fact, able to make those about him happy and prosperous.  The poorest were dearest to his loving heart, and on his estate across the lake he had collected none but the sick and wretched.  The care of the children was left to her, and the little ones clung to her as if she were their mother.  She had neither brother nor sister.—­And so the conversation turned on Alexander, of whom Agatha could never hear enough.

And how proud was Melissa to speak of the bright young artist, who till now had been the sun of her joyless life!  There was much that was good to be said about him:  for the best masters rated his talent highly in spite of his youth; his comrades were faithful; and none knew so well as he how to cheer his father’s dark moods.  Then, there were many amiable and generous traits of which she had been told, or had herself known.  With his very first savings, he had had the Genius with a reversed torch cast in bronze to grace his mother’s grave, and give his father pleasure.  Once he had been brought home half dead after saving a woman and child from drowning, and vainly endeavoring to rescue another child.  He might be wild and reckless, but he had always been faithful to his art and to his love for his family.

Agatha’s eyes opened widely when Melissa told her anything good about her brother, and she clung in terror to her new friend as she heard of her excited orgy with her lover.